Few concepts in contemporary culture have become as fraught as 'photography, ' 'trace, ' and 'trauma.' This lucid and generous study clarifies why and how. Through the work of Zoe Leonard, Gerhard Richter, Mary Kelly, Thomas Demand, and others, Iversen reflects upon the art of recent times as it spirals around matters of evidence, impression, memory, and history. What emerges ... Read moreis a timely response to the limits of representation and the representation of limits.
David Campany, author of A Handful of Dust In this challenging analysis of the way photography can provide a trace of trauma, Iversen offers a revelatory exploration of how theory has introduced a complex method for interpreting the messages in imagery
imagery that is not limited to photography....Recommended.
Choice Original and suggestive in both theoretical approach and in the grouping of artists.
Oxford Art Journal Iversen is one of our foremost theoreticians of photography, whose pioneering work is grounded in a lucid, sophisticated engagement with philosophical, aesthetic, and psychoanalytical discourses. With Photography, Trace, and Trauma, Iversen turns her critical gaze toward the photographic trace and its psychic resonances. With trademark clarity and precision, she weaves an imaginative, rigorous route through the photographic imaginary of the late twentieth century, attending to both its analogue and digital forms. This remarkable book forces us, at a moment of profound technological change, to take the photographic seriously as both object and idea.
Jo Applin, author of Eccentric Objects: Rethinking Sculpture in 1960s America This is a judicious, sensitive, and moving account of the indexical and contingent dimensions that come into art though photography. There is much here that will be new to readers interested in art history, fine art, and cultural studies. Convincing and illuminating, Photography, Trace, and Trauma is a beautifully written book, one that is eminently accessible without sacrificing the subtlety with which these complex and momentous questions are approached.
Michael Newman, author of I know very well . . . but all the same Writings on Artists of the Still and Moving Image Elegant and thought-provoking, Photography, Trace, and Trauma takes an approach to the photographic that is simultaneously expansive and fine-grained. Through case studies across a range of media, Iversen develops a compelling aesthetics of trauma, according to which the artwork models an openness to being marked by time and contingency.
Tamara Trodd, author of The Art of Mechanical Reproduction: Technology and Aesthetics from Duchamp to the Digital Show Less